ONLINE CATALOGUE
25.07.2024 - 08.09.2024
Opening Thursday July 25th from 5 - 8 pm
No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to present Cutting Silk, the third solo exhibition by South African painter Mia Chaplin with the gallery. Through expressive paintings and sculptures characterised by rich impasto surfaces and visible brushwork, Cutting Silk celebrates resilience, metamorphosis, and the ability to find beauty in brokenness.
One of many myths in Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells the story of the goddess Diana, who enjoyed her sanctuary in the heart of a secluded forest—a space she fiercely protected. One day, the young hunter Actaeon accidentally stumbled upon her bathing with her nymphs. Diana, upset by the intrusion, turns Actaeon into a deer, stripping him of his human identity and ability to defend himself. His own hunting dogs, failing to recognise their master, chased and killed him.
Chaplin references this myth through "Losing, Finding, Losing Again" (2024), the first painting encountered upon entering the main gallery. This contemporary rendition of Titian's Diana and Actaeon shows oil-painted bodies that disintegrate and blend into their surroundings. The intruder's body is left out of the frame, as if the artist makes the viewer complicit, while the bodies of the bathers themselves become fluid and concealed, hiding by morphing into each other.
The act of breaking down something, to form something new, lays the foundation for Cutting Silk, drawing parallels with the adaptive camouflage of insects and animals that safeguard themselves through transformation. Chaplin’s bodies evolve into landscapes and landscapes engulf bodies. “Much like the giant leaf-tailed gecko blending with its branch or the silkworm cocooning itself during transformation, these works illustrate how vulnerability can find safety through the act of becoming something new.” (Mia Chaplin).
The eponymous large sculptural painting, suspended from the ceiling and almost dripping with paint residue, alludes to a fisherman’s net freshly pulled from the sea, with its remnants clinging to it. Moving around the piece, one grapples with one’s own role in relation to it. Am I the one caught in the net, or am I the predator? Chaplin plays with the tension between these roles throughout the show. She seduces us with scenes of intimacy, fragility and of apparent captivity on the brink of a shift.
Simultaneously, the net and wired works are reminiscent of a veil, an object often used in art history to symbolise a divide between public and private sphere, evoking mystery and concealment as well as the unknown. It denotes transition as a passage between different states of consciousness. The veil, as a symbol for psychological layers, can convey hidden aspects of emotions and experiences, much like a fishing net thrown deep gathering both catch and bycatch.
Cutting Silk highlights feminine identities that, amidst the ongoing patriarchal need to conquer and control, remain eternally fluid and elusive - ephemeral and challenging to possess - as their forms lack clear beginnings and endings, borders and boundaries. It illuminates the resilience of those who are vulnerable, emphasising how beauty and strength can emerge from brokenness and the continuous process of becoming.
Cutting Silk extends to both gallery locations: Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 and Bos en Lommerweg 88 and runs until September 1st 2024. For more information or inquiries contact info@nomansart.com
Photos by Neeltje de Vries
Mia Chaplin (b. 1990, SA) is a painter and sculptor who lives and works in Cape Town. Working in oil on canvas and paper as well as in bronze and plaster sculpture, her highly expressive works are characterised by their rich impasto surfaces and visible brushwork. Her loose, style of painting is intuitive, heightening the emotion of her pieces. Chaplin’s works are her impressions of the female experience in relation to sexuality, sensuality, intimacy and violence.
Since completing her BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town in 2011, Chaplin has presented various solo exhibitions including Twister (2021) and Underbelly (2019), with No Man’s Art Gallery in Amsterdam as well as Swamp (2022), Mouth (2018), Under a Boiling River (2017), and Binding Forms (2016), with WHATIFTHEWORLD Gallery in Cape Town. She has exhibited her work with NMAG on various pop-up locations such as Iran (2016) and Mexico (2022). She has also extended her painting practice into printmaking, hosting a mini-exhibition of monotypes from the series, The Making of a Sharp Blade (2017), in collaboration with Warren Editions, Cape Town.
Chaplin has completed artist residency programmes at PM/AM Artist residency, London (2023), Cité Internationale Des Artes in the Marais district, Paris (2018), Nirox Arts Foundation in Johannesburg, South Africa (2016) and at OBRAS Foundation in Alentejo, Portugal (2015). Her work has been placed in numerous international private and public collections such as Spiers Arts Trust (SA), Akzo Nobel Art Foundation (NL) and LAM Museum, (NL).
Mia Chaplin in her studio by Jonathan Cope.